Vogue 8536 ish

The side. Obviously.

I'd spent several frustrating hours making a Marcy Tilton skirt (review to follow) and needed an instant gratification kind of project. On a recent visit to Abakhan in Preston I succumbed to the lure of a 15% off sale and a pink and black poly/viscose knit. I think it might be ponte but I'm not sure how ponte is defined. Anyway, it's a hefty, well-behaved kind of knit, with large circles in the middle and smaller ones at the borders. I paid £7.50 for 2 metres (although the cut was generous and I got about 2.5!) and cut it out as soon as it had gone through the washing machine. And had dried, obviously.
The top part is a T shirt pattern, Vogue 8536, which I've used before- I love the fit and the fakey FBA (a bit of stretching in the bust area and it's done!). I grafted it onto the bottom half of Vogue 9631 (which I can't find an image of anywhere on the internet! Maybe my copy is the only one that was sold!). It's a very basic tank dress with a fairly slim bottom half. I just matched up the waistlines and fudged a bit.
It was a pleasure to sew. I didn't really look at the instructions but I did edge stitch around the neck to hold the binding down. There's no way it would have stayed down without it. All done in an hour or so and I'm pleased with the way the sleeves match the part of the body that they are next to. I particularly like it from the side! I can see me wearing this A LOT for work. Or for slobbing around in at the weekend. It doesn't crease and dries really quickly.

The sewing machine The faraway, sad looking shot  with what looks like a big sucker thing about to take me to another dimension. I really must get the hang of the camera. 

Back

Front

It served its purpose as an easy project after the tedium of the skirt but there were leftovers so I had to make.......

So where did the last few months go? My lack of activity here seems to coincide almost exactly with my taking on new responsibilities at work and I think it's sapped my energy more than I thought it would do. I have done quite a lot of sewing- I've even had weeks in which I've made several things- but I didn't get round to blogging about them. Maybe I'll have a day and rope someone in to take pictures and spend all day trying on outfits of things I've made and then put them up here. 
I was also kind of participating in Me-Made-May although without actually signing up to it and definitely got further than last June's attempt. I made it to last Friday wearing something that I'd made every day, then a combination of bad planning and being away from home (and reluctance to iron) led to two days of wearing bought clothes only. I feel a slight sense of failure but it's not as if I'm going to lose any sleep over it. I'm back on the bandwagon now and only missed a couple of days.


In the last few months I have:

• bought a lot more patterns than I should have or needed to.
• made several things I have worn a lot and which are now thoroughly embedded in my wardrobe (particularly a Vogue 1250 and a Simplicity 2599 that I added 3/4 sleeves to).
• made several more things that I have worn only once or not at all!
• made nothing from the three and a half year stash of Burda magazines.
• become the very proud owner of a fabulous sewing room. It's also the guest room but is generally known as "the room of loveliness" and is my go-to place for succour for the soul.
• thought about sewing and planned projects and drawn little pictures of garments and written lists of patterns and fabrics for much more time than I've actually spent sewing.
• still not hemmed the curtains blogged about in August. Hemming is so boring.

So this is my new determination to blog more frequently and perhaps even get around to putting up some pictures of things I've made! Eventually......

Birthday dress

I had a lovely weekend with the house full of family. Now Monday seems grey and cold and too quiet, apart from the wind whipping through the trees that is. But it did bring it home to me how soon my holiday to Germany is. I'm going to my son-in-law-ish's father's birthday party in Zwickau in a couple of weeks and so a posh frock is called for. My daughter with whom I will be doing birthday singing is wearing yellow so I've just preshrunk a piece of lemony lineny type fabric ready for making this. http://voguepatterns.mccall.com/v7762-products-4349.php?page_id=855.

Unfortunately, the piece of fabric looks much smaller now I've washed it (I don't think it shrank much, I think I just overestimated how much there was of it- it's been in my stash for at least ten years). I might get a sleeveless one out of it. Or I might have to have a complete rethink and make something out of the white and bright Ikea cotton I bought cheaply recently. But whatever I do, I need to get on with it!